Pepperdine's New IT Chatbot
Same name: a whole new experience
Between 2024 and 2025, IT carefully evaluated emerging chatbot technologies and selected a new solution that features modern AI capabilities, a customizable knowledge base, and the flexibility to grow with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. This new chatbot–ARIA–is designed to provide more accurate, consistent, and up-to-date answers, along with a helpful, Pepperdine-specific persona.
Accessing the chatbot is done currently on the website pages below. The icon is in the bottom right corner.
What’s New
Here are the features that will improve your interactive experience:
- Built from Pepperdine’s publicly available web content: The chatbot is trained on more than 150,000 web pages and 240 million words from official Pepperdine websites and data. All answers will include source citations.
- Context-aware and responsible AI: Anti-hallucination features are enabled, so if the bot doesn’t know the answer, it will say so clearly (e.g., “I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer.”).
- Pepperdine-focused: The chatbot can only answer questions related to Pepperdine. It won’t respond to unrelated topics.
- Modern interaction features: You can export and share answers easily, and get 24/7 assistance via WaveNet, the Community IT and Community HR websites.
This has a modern AI (similar to ChatGPT), so when interacting with it, how you ask your questions greatly influences the quality of the responses. Clear, specific phrasing helps the AI understand your intent more precisely—vague or overly broad questions can lead to generic or unhelpful answers. Context is key: providing background information or describing the situation ensures the AI tailors its response to your needs.
Don’t hesitate to challenge the answers: if something seems off or too surface-level, ask follow-up questions or request clarification. Rephrasing your question or exploring from another angle can yield better insights. Remember, AI is a tool to support your thinking, not a source of absolute truth. The more thoughtfully you engage, the more valuable the exchange becomes.
We’re confident this new tool will greatly improve access to information and support across the University. If you have questions or feedback after launch, we’d love to hear from you so send your responses to appdev@pepperdine.edu.
The chatbot's knowledge base is built off the following public websites and the current academic Calendars. It refreshes its knowledge on a weekly basis, so it will always be up to date with its answers:
University Sites
https://www.pepperdine.edu/
https://community.pepperdine.edu/
Additional Sites
https://onlinegrad.pepperdine.edu/
https://library.pepperdine.edu/
https://emergency.pepperdine.edu/
https://boonecenter.pepperdine.edu/
https://dining.pepperdine.edu/
Academic Catalogs
https://www.pepperdine.edu/academics/catalogs/